The MidEast Mindset -- Depends Whose Ox Being Gored

"There are no two sides to this conflict."

"If someone is not standing with us today, he is standing with monsters who murder babies and old people."

"If you are not standing against terror, you are part of terror."

Lior Haiat, spokesman, Israeli Foreign Ministry

"It is in Israel's interest to avoid civilian casualties and Palestinian casualties, because Hamas clearly wants to turn this into a wider Arab-Israeli war, or indeed a war between the Muslim world and the wider world."

"And none of us, including Israel, want that."

U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly

"When the Americans went to Fallujah after 9/11, they didn't ask questions about the humanitarian needs of Fallujah."

"The best example is the Second World War in which the whole free world fought against German Nazis, and no one asked about the humanitarian needs of the enemy."

"It's a war against an enemy state."

Yaakov Amidror, former national security adviser

A grab taken from a UGC video posted on the Telegram channel "South First Responders", Oct. 9, 2023, shows the aftermath of an attack on the Supernova music Festival by Palestinian militants, near Kibbutz Reim in the Negev desert in southern Israel on October 8....

South First Responders/AFP via Getty Images

 

On Monday, over a week after the October 7 invasion of Israel's northern border towns, kibbutzim and villages, taking Israel's defenses by complete surprise when Hamas terrorist operatives slaughtered soldiers, men, women and children, raping women, torturing the helpless before murdering entire families in their homes, and abducting two hundred civilians, the elderly and ailing, infants and women, taking them to Gaza as  sex slaves and exchange hostages, the Israeli military toured a dozen foreign correspondents through scenes of unprecedented violent depravity.

 

Playing a 42-minute agonizing account of attackers stopping cars to shoot drivers and passengers, axing a corpse, burning a house, they were addressed by Rear-Admiral Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman for the IDF: "We see this as a war against humanity, not just Israel". Exposing the outside world to a level of savagery rarely seen even in a theatre of war. Where a hoe was used to repeatedly smash the skull of a foreign worker while he was still alive, eventually decapitating him, all shown in live action on a video, one of many amassed by Hamas.

 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken described his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh the day before. While Secretary of State Blinken reported their discussion was about "the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel", the Saudi prince stated that the focus of their conversation was the search for methods "to stop the military operations that have claimed the lives of innocent people"; obviously his focus on Israel's bombing of Gaza.

 

In the entire region comprised substantively of majority Sunni governments, few have taken to denouncing the October 7 Hamas massacre of over 1,400 Israelis. With the notable exception of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, signees to the Abraham Accords. At the same time the focus of most of the rest of the world has shifted its concern to civilian casualties occurring in Gaza, the result of daily Israeli airstrikes. Allies such as the United States and the United Kingdom have spoken publicly as they call on Israel to protect non-combatants.  

Somewhat as they did in the firebombing of Dresden and the Atomic blasts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

 

In Israel, the dismay at this reaction by the rest of the world is palpable among its officials. Since the surprise attack they have made every effort to bring foreign leaders and journalists to the grim sites of the killings, they have gathered testimony from survivors and spliced together videos depicting gruesome beheadings, eye-gougings perpetrated gleefully by the terrorists who committed scores of atrocities. Many of the videos documenting the atrocities come courtesy of Hamas public relations.

 

Israeli soldiers remove the body of a compatriot, killed during an attack by the Palestinian militants, in Kfar Aza, south of Israel bordering Gaza Strip, on Oct.10, 2023. Israel pounded Hamas targets in Gaza...Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

"Let me tell  you, Mr. Secretary, this will be a long war, the price will be  high", warned Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. "But we are going to win for Israel and the Jewish people, and for the values that both [our] countries believe in." Despite that U.S. President Joe Biden has supported Israel's view that Hamas must be entirely eliminated, he has called repeatedly on the Israeli government to limit civilian casualties: "The overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas", he cautioned. 

Nor did the overwhelming number of German citizens during World War Two round up and send Jews to the gas chambers, though they -- like the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who pose a threat to life and limb of any Israeli Jew that might happen to wander inadvertently into either area -- had full knowledge of the dehumanizing of Jews and took part in humiliating and isolating them before they were rounded up for death. Not only did Palestinians decades ago when the last vote took place, overwhelmingly vote Hamas into government, current polls demonstrate that the majority population support Hamas's violence aimed at Israel.

 

An Israeli soldier walks by a house destroyed by Hamas militants in Kibbutz Be'eri, Oct. 11, 2023.    Baz Ratner/AP

The Middle East street generally does not view Hamas as a terror force; it is portrayed frequently as a product of decades of 'oppression' by Israel which has been forced by the level of threat posed against its very existence and that of Jews experiencing countless suicide missions and lone wolf attacks leaving Israelis dead both singly and in groups, to take military precautions in preventing ongoing attacks against its citizens. Measures to keep murderers out of Israel from the neighbours are interpreted as 'oppressive occupation'.

In Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan officials explain that their populations are restive, watching Israel strike back at Gaza. They would be; the Arab states have long fed the Arab street with alienating and hostile propaganda against Jews and Israel. So that even if the leaders finally decide to set aside military violence against Israel to forge a regional alliance where all can prosper, the street is slow to catch up, viewing Israel and Jews as mortal enemies; as they've been taught to do.

Everywhere in the region, even in those states where the Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed as a terrorist organization, its offshoots Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are viewed favourably by the population.

A bullet-shuttered window of the entrance to a kindergarten is seen in Kibbutz Be'eri, Oct. 11, 2023.   Baz Ratner/AP